Encyclopedia of

Jesse Jackson Biography

Born: October 18, 1941
Greenville, South Carolina
African American political leader, religious minister, and orator

Civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson has spent decades in the public
eye in support of ending racial and class divisions in America. He is the
founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, a group that works to improve the
lives of people throughout the United States and the world.

Early life and education

Jesse Louis Jackson was born on October 18, 1941, in Greenville, South
Carolina. He was the son of Helen Burns and her married next-door
neighbor, Noah Robinson. Jackson was teased by his neighbors and
classmates for being "a nobody who had no daddy." Jackson
developed a strong desire to succeed and an understanding of the
oppressed (those who are treated unjustly). With advice from his
grandmother, Jackson overcame his childhood problems, finishing tenth in
his high-school class. He earned a football scholarship to attend the
University of Illinois in Chicago. Jackson, eager to get away from the
prejudice (dislike of people based on their race) and segregation
(separation based on race) of the South, traveled north only to find
both open and hidden discrimination (unequal treatment) at the
university and in other parts of the city.

After several semesters Jackson decided to leave the University of
Illinois. He returned to the South and enrolled at North Carolina
Agricultural and Technical College (A&T) in Greensboro, North
Carolina, an institution for African American students, where he was
elected student body president. As a college senior he became a leader
in the civil rights movement. Jackson actively encouraged his fellow
students to protest against racial injustice by staging repeated
demonstrations and boycotts (protests in which, for example, organizers
refuse to shop at a certain store in an attempt to get the store to
change an unjust policy or position). Jackson graduated in 1964 with a
degree in sociology and economics.

Civil rights movement

After graduation Jackson decided to attend the Chicago Theological
Seminary. After two and a half years at the school, Jackson left the
seminary (a place for religious education) in 1966 before completing his
divinity degree (a degree in the study of religion). He also joined the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights
organization led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) that
held nonviolent protests against segregation in the South. In April 1968
many of SCLC's officers—including Jackson—were
drawn away from other civil rights protests by a garbage
collectors' strike in Memphis, Tennessee. Tragically, King, in
his attempt to prevent racial violence in that city, was killed by an
assassin's bullet while standing on the balcony of his hotel
room.

Jackson later claimed on national television that he had been the last
person to talk to King and that he had held the dying leader in his
arms, getting blood all over his shirt. The other men present agreed
that this was not

Jesse Jackson.
Reproduced by permission of

AP/Wide World Photos

.

true—that Jackson had been in the parking lot facing King when
the shooting occurred and had neither climbed the steps to the balcony
afterward nor gone to the hospital with King. Whatever the truth of the
matter may be, Jackson's appearance on national television the
next day with his bloodied shirt brought the horror of the assassination
into American homes, making him a well-known national figure. This
publicity caused the media to refer to him as the new leader of the
civil rights movement. In 1971 Jackson was suspended from the SCLC after
its leaders claimed that he was using the organization to further his
own personal goals.

After his suspension, Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to
Save Humanity). Standing in front of a picture of Dr. King, Jackson
promised to begin "a rainbow coalition of blacks and whites
gathered together to push for a greater share of economic and political
power for all poor people in America." Jackson spoke out against
racial prejudice and discrimination, military action, and class
divisions in America. In 1976 Jackson created PUSH-Excel, a program
aimed at encouraging children and teens to succeed. A fiery orator
(public speaker), Jackson traveled from city to city delivering his
message of personal responsibility and self-worth to students:
"You're not a man because you can kill somebody. You are
not a man because you can make a baby.… You're a man only
if you can raise a baby, protect a baby and provide for a baby."

The rainbow coalition and bids for the presidency

Jackson became involved in international politics when President Jimmy
Carter (1924–) approved his visit to South Africa. Jackson
attracted huge crowds at rallies, where he denounced (criticized)
apartheid, South Africa's political system that prevented the
black majority of the population from enjoying the rights and privileges
of the white minority. Later in 1979 he toured the Middle East, where he
was criticized for embracing Yasir Arafat (1929–), the
Palestinian leader who was considered a terrorist (a person who uses
terror to force others to act in a certain way) by the American
government. These international trips caused Jackson's fame and
popularity to grow within the African American community.

As the 1980s began, Jackson was no longer a young man with long hair and
gold chains but was instead a more mature figure seeking ways to change
the Democratic Party from within. He continued to promote his
"rainbow coalition" as a way for all Americans to improve
the country. Jackson's support in the African American community
also allowed him to influence both local and national elections.
Possibly the most important campaign in which he was involved was the
election victory of Harold Washington, the first African American mayor
of Chicago, Illinois, in 1983. Jackson's ability to convince over
one hundred thousand African Americans, many of them youths, to register
to vote played a large part in Washington's victory.

Jackson decided to campaign in the 1984 presidential election as a
Democrat. His campaign focused on social programs for the poor and
disabled, reduced taxes for the poor, increased voting rights, effective
programs to improve the job opportunities of women and minorities, and
improved civil rights. He called for increased aid to African nations
and more consideration of the rights of Arabs. Many senior African
American politicians refused to support Jackson, believing that his
candidacy would disrupt the Democratic Party and benefit the
Republicans. However, many poor African Americans supported him. He
received 3.5 million votes, and possibly 2 million of those voters were
newly registered. Although his campaign was unsuccessful, Jackson had
broken new ground while involving more African Americans in the
political process.

After the 1984 election Jackson split his time between working for
Operation PUSH in Chicago and his new National Rainbow Coalition, which
he began in 1985, in Washington, D.C. (The two organizations later
joined together to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.) He ran again for
the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1988 election. Although
his second campaign received much wider support, Jackson finished second
to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis (1933–), who went on to
lose the presidential election. In 1992 he backed Democratic candidate
Bill Clinton (1946–) during the presidential campaign. He used
his influence to urge African American voters to support Clinton. These
efforts helped Clinton win the election and return a Democrat to the
White House for the first time in twelve years.

More recent activities

Despite criticism that he was simply a cheerleader for causes and
represented style more than substance, Jackson continued to speak out
for civil rights and to challenge others to improve themselves. In 1995
Jackson wrote in
Essence
magazine, "People who are victimized may not be responsible for
being down, but they must be responsible for getting up. Slave masters
don't retire; people who are enslaved change their minds and
choose to join the abolitionist [antislavery] struggle.… Change
has always been led by those whose spirits were bigger than their
circumstances.… I do have hope. We have seen significant
victories during the last 25 years."

In November 1999 Jackson came to the defense of six high-school students
expelled for fighting in Decatur, Illinois. The Decatur school board
expelled the students for two years for their involvement in a brawl
during a football game in September 1999. Jackson met with the board to
try to reach a compromise
that would allow the students to return to regular classes, but the
board would only agree to reduce the punishment to one year and to allow
the students to attend a different school. As a result, Jackson led a
protest march at the school, where he was arrested for criminal
trespassing.

Jackson received his master of divinity degree from the Chicago
Theological Seminary on June 3, 2000. He had been only three courses
short of earning his degree when he left the school more than three
decades earlier. On August 9, 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded a
Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jackson. The medal is the highest honor
for civilians (nonmembers of military, police or fire-fighting units) in
the United States. Jackson disappointed many of his followers when it
became known in 2001 that he had fathered a daughter—who was
twenty months old at the time of his announcement—with a woman
other than his wife. "I fully accept responsibility, and I am
truly sorry for my actions," he said in a written statement.
Despite this setback in his personal life, Jackson continues to be a
successful advocate for human rights and social change.